Evolution of network technologies resulted in a world of interconnected networks where businesses and households are now amazingly close to each-other. The notion of “network” turns out to be central to our times: the Internet, LANs, WANs, enterprise networks, home networks, etc. are today interconnected over the World Wide Web, changing our lives and the way we do business. This evolution presents significant challenges to service and network providers, which attempt to serve their clients faster and better, by continuously enlarging and upgrading their networks with a view to serve a growing number of client and to implement the latest advances in networking technologies.
Typically, the equipment making up these networks is situated in environmentally hardened enclosures, such as cabinets, central offices or point-of-presence offices, which enclosures are generally environmentally controlled. Because the cost of space in these environments is high, the equipment is commonly organized in the most compact manner that is practical. As a result, there is often a confusing collection of cabling running through the environment to interconnect the equipment within the respective location (office, cabinet, etc.) to both other equipment within the location and equipment outside of the location.
In particular, network deployment and upgrading present complex challenges to providers, one of which is interconnection between equipment (also referred to here as systems) of various sizes, makes and functionality that made-up the network. To use an example provided on the HP website at http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/about/asset_tracking.html: “a single rack of servers might have 2,000 identical optical cables running into and out of it; it can take two people three days to connect just 500 of them.” Therefore, it is important that cables are connected to their specific place on the equipment correctly and fast.
In the case of upgrades, techniques to ascertain the existing physical cabling connections between various systems within a certain location are particularly useful. These techniques would also apply to cabling connections of electronic systems in general, in situations where there are numerous systems to be interconnected at a particular installation site and there is a very large number of electrical or optical cables interconnecting-them, such that there exists a very real possibility of incorrect connections. In these cases, determining the exact nature of any interconnection errors would be a very onerous and time consuming task. In addition, these techniques need also to be equally applicable to cables made of optical fiber or copper.
It is known to attach identifying tags to cabling; this may be as simple as attaching a paper tag with a tie-wrap or writing on a piece of tape that is adhered to the cable. However, physical tags may become separated from the cables and the labels may be rendered illegible. Further, locating a particular tag amongst a great many tagged cables in a crowded environment may be difficult.
It is also known to use unique connectors. The connectors may be affixed to multiple cables and have a geometry that allows insertion into only one type of device in one particular way. However, the connectors must be connected to the cables in the proper way. Further, designing and manufacturing unique connectors for a very large number of cables is difficult and relatively costly because each can only serve a particular function and production runs tend to be in relatively small numbers.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID or RF-ID) technology, although nascent, is known for improving supply chain efficiency by facilitating tracking of goods. For example, RFID may displace the bar codes currently used to identify products. An RFID tag is a small, inexpensive circuitry chip which stores data such as a product's expiration date and Electronic Product Code (EPC). The circuitry is responsive to a particular RF signal transmitted by a reader to generate a corresponding signal including the stored data. The range of the corresponding signal is dependent on various factors, but may be effective up to ten meters.
For example, Hewlett Packard and Connectivity Technologies offer solutions in this area, particularly using RFID tags at the ends of cables and RFID readers at the connection ports of systems: the readers identify the endpoint of cables that should be connected to the ports. The cable identification information is then sent to an Operation Support System (OSS) or Network Management System (NMS) that uses the information to determine the interconnection of the systems, which is made available to an operator, e.g. as a network map. However, not only does this solution require an OSS or NMS capable of receiving and processing the interconnection information, it also requires that all systems participating in this solution have RFID readers at their port connectors. Retrofitting or replacing the I/O cards of legacy systems to include the required RFID readers may not be practical or cost-effective in many cases.
In summary, the above solutions are not cost-effective when applied to legacy systems or when an OSS/NMS is not present in the network, or it is present but it does not support the respective solutions.
It has also been proposed a system for locating the geographical position of network elements in a network, as described in the U.S. patent application 20030109267 (Bulut) filed on Jun. 12, 2003 and entitled “Network element locating system”. This patent application describes equipping network equipment with locators and connecting into the network a position manager. The locators acquire location information for the respective equipment and store it as position data. The equipment transmits the position data to the position manager over the network on request, and the position manger provides the user with the location of the equipment.
However, this solution is mostly concerned with locating the equipment in case of faults and does not address the problem of correctly connecting the cables to the equipment at a certain location.
It would be desirable to have a solution to determine the cabling interconnection of systems that at least does not require an RFID reader at both endpoints of a cable interconnecting two systems, or an OSS/NMS system enabled to receive and process the cabling interconnection information.
Furthermore, it would be desirable for such a solution to be capable of determining the exact cabling interconnection between two systems wherein the systems are interconnected via one or more intermediate systems.